Many report symptoms lasting two years or longer and about 1.5m say disease affects day-to-day activities

About 2 million people in England and Scotland say they are experiencing long Covid, figures reveal, with many reporting their symptoms have lasted two years or longer.

The findings were released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and cover the period from November 2023 to March 2024, revealing of those who reported having long Covid, about 1.5 million people – about three-quarters– felt their day-to-day activities were affected, while 381,000 people – about a fifth – said their ability to undertake such activities had been “limited a lot”.

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Exclusive: Extensive polling ordered by the then chancellor, documents reveal, but scientific advisers not consulted

Rishi Sunak ordered multiple taxpayer-funded focus groups and polls to craft the messaging of his planned “eat out to help out” campaign in July 2020, despite keeping the UK’s top medical and scientific advisers in the dark about the scheme.

The Treasury negotiated five public opinion contracts worth more than £2m from June 2020 throughout the pandemic, while Sunak was chancellor, including those to establish how best to “sell” the hospitality scheme to voters.

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Only private jabs are available to most, but annual shots would save the NHS nearly £4bn a year and prevent more than 5,000 deaths

• Cheaper private Covid jabs may end up as costly as pricier ones, say experts

Private Covid boosters are available for people who do not qualify to receive these vaccines on the NHS. But is it worth paying for a shot?

With most people now having been exposed to Sars-CoV-2 through previous vaccination and/or infection, our immune systems are generally well equipped to recognise and kill the virus if we become infected.

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Exclusive: Multi-dose vials could push up charge per patient, while experts warn high cost could widen inequalities

Cheaper private Covid jabs could end up being just as expensive as their pricier alternative because the vaccine must be given in groups of five, experts have warned.

Boots and pharmacies that partner with the company Pharmadoctor are offering Pfizer/BioNTech jabs to those not eligible for a free vaccination through the NHS, with the former charging almost £100 a shot. The latter is also offering the latest Novavax jab, a protein-based vaccine, at a cost of about £50.

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Pharmacy to offer Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to those not eligible for NHS booster shot from next week

Boots is to offer Covid vaccinations for almost £100 a shot, making it the latest provider to sell the jabs to those not eligible for a booster through the NHS.

The company has confirmed it will offer the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to healthy customers in England aged 12 and over from next week, at a cost of £98.95 a jab.

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The 100-day challenge, to be able to contain a virus while a vaccine is approved, manufactured and delivered, looks ever more remote

Four years on from the first Covid lockdown, life feels to be largely back to normal, although legacies of the pandemic remain. Collective amnesia seems to have set in. Politicians seem eager to move forward and not relive the decisions, delays and deaths that characterised public policy and press briefings. Yet we can’t forget such a brutal event, when Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy to decline in 84% of countries, including Britain. Pandemics aren’t a one-off event. There’s still a risk of another happening within our lifetimes.

Fortunately, what to do about the next pandemic is still very much at the top of the global health agenda. In 2021, I was asked to co-chair the US National Academy of Sciences’ committee on advancing pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccine preparedness and response . This group was sponsored by the US government to provide recommendations on how to improve preparedness for influenza, which is seen as one of the most likely candidates for the next pandemic. I was also involved with the Lancet Covid-19 taskforce , which brought together global experts to look at how to improve on the Covid response, and what challenges there were going forward. These groups represent some of the world’s best thinkers on global health and pandemic preparedness. Here’s what I learned.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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Nodding syndrome is a distressing disease that stunts growth, harms brains and sparks convulsions. Though its cause is still unknown, there is now hope that epilepsy drugs can help afflicted children

The other children move away, frightened, when the convulsions start. Tabo takes a long, guttural breath before slumping on to the ground unconscious, her entire body shaking. The 17-year-old’s mother, Penina Monyo Gulu Biro, gently holds the girl while the attack lasts.

A minute or two later, Tabo (pictured above) sits up again, tears rolling down her cheeks. “She cries because she’s sad to be like this,” says Biro.

An aerial view of the Dombolo River, near Mvolo town, in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state

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While the long-term risk from a current infection is 10 times less than it was in 2020-21, a lot of people are still suffering after getting Covid early in the pandemic

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Long Covid is one of the most controversial topics remaining about the pandemic. Depending on who you ask, it is either a real and current threat to the health of the globe, or a relatively minor issue that we should pay little attention to in the future. It is hard to weigh in on the topic without passionate advocates taking issue with the things that you say, which is true of quite a lot of the conversations we have had over the course of the pandemic.

A recent study from Queensland has injected further discord into this already complicated space. The press release about the study says that, in a large observational study, people who had tested positive for Covid-19 when the Omicron variant was spreading were no more likely to report ongoing symptoms or serious problems in their daily life than either people who tested negative or those who tested positive for influenza. This follows similar previous work by the same team showing almost identical results. According to Dr John Gerrard, one of the authors of the paper and Queensland’s chief health officer, the findings call into question the entire conceptualisation of long Covid, arguing that it may be “time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’” .

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